True Colours
by Manwards
Summary: A cocktail party on the Tokyo coast is only the beginning of the evening for the Outer Soldiers. The rest of the night involves hostile invaders, mysterious jewellery, fast cars and a beautiful young thief. So, just another day at the proverbial office.
1. Prologue

_Screams and silence. Their dreadful contrast choking the air. Which had come first? Both. Neither. Each followed the other. __A symmetrical circle of dissonance and quietus. __No beginning. No end. Not any more. The monochrome cycle of hollow midnight and distant lightning. Around and around. Around her throat. Choking her. Crushing pressure. Weight on her breast. Weight on her heart. Weight in her legs. Silence and screams. And laughter._

"Excuse me?"

This voice, unexpected and unfamiliar, came from somewhere else, somewhere distant, and it was a moment before Midori realised the tall woman standing before her – standing over her – had spoken. Her head lifted, an involuntary motion that brought her startled gaze into alignment with eyes of polished amethyst. "I'm sorry," the stranger continued, "but do you have the time?" Her voice was quiet, almost lost in the surrounding din, and seemed both to complement and contradict her stature and statuesque beauty. Dark green hair fringed a face of marble elegance and cascaded in a jade waterfall to her knees, dazzling against the cloud-white silk of her cocktail dress. Older than Midori, she was nonetheless still young, perhaps even a fellow teenager, and yet some unplumbed depth in those orchid eyes suggested otherwise. They possessed a knowing keenness, the gift of perspicacity awarded solely to the wise. Within their grip, Midori was momentarily and unequivocally certain that this paradoxical woman knew everything. She shook her head once, breaking their hold and answering the woman's lingering question in one. Muttering an apology of her own, she turned and walked away into the crowd, pulling her cloak tighter about her as she went.

The summer sun, reluctant to end another perfect day on the Tokyo coast, had finally truckled to its daily duty and retreated to the horizon. As the moon took its place, beginning its nightly shift at the top of the world, so too was the party at the manor house on the hilltop below getting underway. A hundred guests came close to filling its stately ballroom, their ebony suits and lustrous dresses vivid against the white pine of the walls and the chestnut hardwood underfoot. The mingled sounds of their confabulation and laughter floated up to the ornate and enormous chandelier, a fluorescent crystalline flower absorbing casual conversation through osmosis.

Midori knew she didn't belong here. She was an outsider among these beautiful, carefree people. That was not to say that she was not beautiful; far from it. Beneath the folds of her ragged hood, apple-green eyes shone from an oval face the colour of rich chocolate. Curly brunette hair, a shade darker than her skin, provided a perfect frame for her delicate features, and had her tiny, cherry-pink lips curved into the smallest of smiles she might have superseded, quite unintentionally, even the most glamorous of the glitterati present.

However, she was not smiling. Beautiful she might have been, but carefree she was not.

Stepping aside to avoid a bustling, black-clad waiter carrying a silver platter of food she did not recognise, Midori silently chastised herself. She had allowed the memories to envelop her again, had surrendered to them as she always did. Screams and silence and laughter. Every night, every day, every moment. She always gave in to them, gave them license to possess her, to shout and whisper and roar their discordant sonata in her ear.

She couldn't allow them to. Not now. Not when she'd come so far. Not when she was so close.

Almost successfully ignoring the half-suppressed sniggers of a pair of partygoers who prodded one another and pointed at her dress, or lack of one, Midori cast her eyes around the crowded auditorium. She couldn't see him. Not yet. But he was here. Of that she was certain. Swallowing the cold lump at the back of her throat and feeling it sink slowly into the pit of her stomach, she began to walk again. Her weary feet took her in no particular direction but away from the persistent snickering.

Then, alone in the crowd once more, she continued her search. Sekken was here, somewhere.

She would find him.


	2. Chapter 1

"It's here." Haruka did not turn from the balustrade as she spoke. Her eyes, the same unfathomable navy as the ocean that yawned and stretched before her to sleep deeply with the night, were veiled briefly beneath their thick lashes. The steady evening breeze combed the sea and climbed the black cliffs and white weatherboard walls of the manor to tease her own short, sandy blonde waves. It brought with it that feeling again; that intangible certainty that something was amiss. Something here did not belong. "Somewhere." 

"Agreed."

Keeping her hands on the rounded railing, Haruka turned her head to look over her shoulder. Michiru sat in the balcony chair, one satin-gloved hand directing the flow of her ocean green hair; her like-coloured eyes reflected in the surface of the golden mirror she held in the other. "I feel it too," she continued. Her eyes left the polished glass and now mirrored Haruka's. "The source of the turbulence is at this party."

She stood, smoothing down the folds of her mint-green gown, and crossed the short space between them in a few light steps to stand at Haruka's side. The taller blonde stole a sideways glance at her, following the graceful contours of her face to the rose-tinged lips with their perpetual half-smile. Her feminine beauty was in contrast with Haruka's own boyish looks. She must have allowed her gaze to linger for a moment too long, for Michiru's lips widened their smile before parting to ask, rhetorically, "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing, nothing," replied Haruka with conspicuous innocence, turning her face back into the breeze to cool the pink warmth spreading across her cheeks. "I was just thinking that you look nice tonight." One hand left the banister to conceal the clearing of her throat. "The dress, I mean."

Michiru shrugged her slender shoulders. "I should hope so." She turned to face Haruka fully. "After all, you did pay for it." A slight frown narrowed her eyes but left her smile untouched, and she raised a hand to the square shoulder of Haruka's black jacket. "Your tie is loose," she said by way of explanation. Haruka rolled her eyes and sighed in an exaggerated display of disinclination, before turning and allowing her companion's nimble fingers to adjust the askew article.

Satisfied, Michiru took a step backward. The breeze spoke up once more, tugging insistently at the curls of their hair and the hems of their clothes, whispering to their senses, telling them of salt, and of the leaves on the red maples dotted about the grounds below, and of premonition.

That feeling again. "Do you think it's related to what's happening in the city?"

Michiru shook her head slowly. "No," she replied. "I believe that's another story."

"Busy night in Tokyo." Haruka smiled wryly. "I'm sure the kids will be fine."

"No doubt," Michiru concurred. "Now, are you ready? It's almost eight."

Haruka nodded and gestured toward the doorway. "After you." She took one last look back at the black blanket tucked into the horizon before turning to follow her partner indoors. "Showtime." As soon as the utterance had left her lips it was seized by the wind and carried away on a current of air, and by the time the door had clicked softly to a close it was lost to the dusk.

* * *

"Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to welcome our entertainment for the evening." 

Midori paid little attention to the announcement from the raised platform at the head of the room.

"Acclaimed artist and accomplished violinist – although I'm afraid only the latter will be demonstrated for us tonight – Michiru Kaioh-san."

Hushed, excited murmurs and a smattering of applause. Midori kept walking.

"And accompanying her on the piano, Haruka Tenoh-san."

The cloaked girl continued to thread her way through the throng, a dull needle weaving a tapestry of sparkling sequins. She dared not look behind her to see if the tall woman was following. Midori had glimpsed her twice now since she had first asked for the time. She hadn't been particularly close by, nor had she necessarily been looking in Midori's direction, but the frequency with which she seemed to occupy the periphery of her vision had been adequate to unnerve her. The woman was silent and alone in a room full of chattering couples. Was she waiting for somebody? Was that why she had asked for the time? Was she merely milling about the place, restless for her partner to arrive? Or was she waiting for something else?

Perhaps Midori was being paranoid. Such suspicion was foreign to her. It left a bitter taste in her mouth. As loathe as she was to consider it, though, perhaps it was agreeable after all. She had trusted Sekken. They all had.

It was not until the first few tinkling notes had hopped the short space between herself and the stage that she finally relinquished her attention to it. A young man with a head of barley hair sat poised on a stool before the baby grand piano, his tuxedo the same rich black as its glossy skin and his fingers lightly tickling its long white teeth. As he finished his introduction, his partner – a striking young lady wearing a silk dress that matched her marine hair – began to deftly draw her bow across the strings of the maple violin resting on her bare shoulder. Back and forth, strings singing sweetly as they slid across one another's surfaces, and with each pull of the woman's wrist Midori felt that it was herself being drawn; reeled weightlessly closer by a filigree line perceptible only to the ear. The music looped around her in long ribbons, sometimes streaming smoothly, sometimes pulling taut as the song told its melancholy story. Here, beneath the piano notes falling like spring rain and the wistful wind of the violin's dulcet tones, her duty and dismay seemed so distant.

She shared this ethereal garden with only two others: the violinist and the pianist; two ideal figures on their pedestal. As Midori gazed up at them in her enchantment, so too they came to look down upon her, and her eyes tentatively touched theirs in turn. Now she was sure she was being paranoid, as she thought she saw the same penetrating perception in their peers that she had seen in the tall woman.

Such shaky certainty did not stop her from turning her head away.

And there she was again. The tall woman. The spell was broken.

She was standing perhaps six feet to Midori's left, two quiet men and a conversely chatty woman serving as a buffer between them. As before, she wasn't looking in Midori's direction. She, like everybody else in the room, was looking up at the performers. Now the violinist's eyes met with hers, and to Midori's undisguised disquiet the two greenheads exchanged a terse nod.

The bass metronome of Midori's heartbeat came close to drowning out the sound of the unsound theories fluttering like moths around her mind. What if they were all in cohesion? What if they _did_ know the truth? What if they were working for-

_Laughter._

A throaty gale of booming laughter rolled across the room to rumble like thunder in her ears, shaking away her thoughts like fruit until only the barren branch of memory – thought's wavering reflection – remained. The laughter was there, too: hollow and drifting in the fathomless depths of recollection. Another peal resounded from the back of the room. Its brackish fingers raked down her throat and intertwined with those already wringing her heart. It was the same laughter that had mocked her every night and every day and at every moment.

Sekken's laughter.


	3. Chapter 2

All she could do now was wait.

A derelict table in one corner of the spacious room and specious party, its varnished surface dulled with shadow like fine black dust, provided Midori a vantage point from which to observe him. Taking care to examine him only during the course of a sweeping, disinterested survey, she caught transient glimpses of the rotund beast of a man named Sekken. Arrogance and cigar smoke clung to the red wool of his padded suit and swathed him in thick clouds that slowly poisoned the fungible men in black, scowling above their grins, and the giggling women who varied only in their varicoloured dresses, seated around tables at his left and right hands.

Watching him as a child watches a hirsute spider on the ceiling, Midori tasted a cocktail of fear and awe and something else she didn't recognise, something warm and potent that made her shiver beneath her bark-brown cloak.

"Is this seat taken?"

The mixture became ice water that hit the back of her throat in a sudden squall. By the time Midori had turned, half-choking on the gelid surprise, the interloper had successfully insinuated themselves on the chair beside hers. Relief was her first, automatic reaction to the face she found waiting for her there, with its distinct lack of jade hair and orchid eyes. Her uninvited guest was not the tall woman, then, but she quickly recognised them regardless. Her relief dissipated, leaving a lingering residue of unease in its place.

"Haruka Tenoh," said the young blonde man by way of introduction, extending his hand with its long, dexterous fingers. Midori gasped slightly at its strength as it enfolded her own hand and shook it staunchly. "M-Midori Ohano," she stammered in response, realising only as her name left her lips that an alias might have been safer. Then, speaking over the almost audible hum of the man's expectant stare, "Y-you're the piano player."

Haruka's lips parted to admit a bashful grin. "Yeah, that's right. Just taking a short recess before we go back up." He paused, and Midori could feel his eyes on her, eating through the thick cloth of her cloak like indigo moths, seeing through her pretense. "They put on a good party here," he finally continued, gesturing generally over his shoulder at the teeming ballroom. "Having a good time?"

"Yes, thank-you," replied Midori, too quickly. She knew he knew she was lying. Even she hadn't believed the sound of her own timorous voice. "I l-liked your music," she added for the sake of verisimilitude, although this particular statement was truthful. "Your partner was wonderful with the violin." Haruka smirked. "You should see what she can do with a lemon."

Midori did not gather his inference, nor did she attempt to. "You're her husband?" she asked instead. She turned her head and let her eyes trail their familiar tour from point A: a potted fern that looked like a green geyser in a ceramic pond; to point B: a somewhat gloomy painting of a bowl laden with waxy fruit. Somewhere between the two she saw Sekken again, fat cigar clenched between those sharp shark teeth.

He was still laughing.

"Nah," came Haruka's voice from beside her. "Doubt I'll ever get married. Not the type."

Midori turned her head back towards his general vicinity, neither looking at him or away. "I'm sorry. You're her boyfriend, then?" Haruka shook his head once. "Eh, not really." He nodded in her direction; she saw the movement at the corner of her eye. "How about you? Waiting for someone?"

Midori looked at him. The curve of his slender cheekbones and full lips gave his handsome face an almost feminine allure. He was beautiful, in a way.

He reminded her of somebody.

His question still hung in the air like the smoggy exhalation of the tobacco firefly extruding from Sekken's mouth. "What makes you think that?" she heard herself reply, countering with a question of her own. Haruka shrugged the padded shoulders of his black jacket. "You've scanned the room twice since I joined you," he replied, and in the same matter-of-fact tone, "So, who is it? A man?"

"I suppose," Midori admitted, and waited. She was certain now that he knew who she was and what she was doing. She waited for him to leap to his feet, pointing a long index finger at her, tearing away her cloak and announcing with vindication to the hundred strangers in the room that _this_ is who she really was and _this_ is what she was really doing. And then she would hear that rusty laughter over her shoulder, rolling closer like some encroaching engine, and she would have failed in her duty for the second and final time.

Instead, he said "Glad to hear it. Shame if a pretty girl like you were alone at a party like this."

Relief and something else coloured Midori's cheeks crimson. "W-what would your p-partner say if she heard you say that?" she managed to stutter. Haruka took an exaggerated glance around the room – did he notice the laughing man with the cigar, Midori wondered? – before reporting "I don't see her anywhere. I think I'm safe."

He turned back to Midori and examined her with fresh interest. She fought the urge to squirm. Perhaps he really was just a playboy with a dubious dedication to his violinist girlfriend, or wife, or whatever she might be. If that were the case, he would soon leave to rejoin her on the stage, and Midori could resume her vigil in solitude.

"Y'know," he began, his tone playful, "that outfit of yours doesn't quite fit with the dress code." Midori said nothing, silently admonishing herself for feeling ashamed of such a thing at such a time. "You'll be thrown out if you aren't careful." Her downturned eyes could see him still watching her, until he emitted a low chuckle and leaned over to touch her arm in a way probably intended to be comforting. "Don't worry," he told her, "I'm not telling anyone," and then he suddenly leaned forward, half-standing to position his mouth at her earlobe, his face almost cohabiting her hood. "I have secrets too," he whispered. His breath hotly tickled her inner ear and she tightened her grip on the sides of her seat. "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

_"A-hem."_

For a moment Haruka did not move, and Midori wondered if the polite cough had been a wishful figment of her imagination. But then, slowly and guiltily as a dog caught in an act of myopic vandalism, he turned to face the aqua-haired woman standing behind him. Arms that had cradled her violin like a precious child were now folded in the manner of a reprimanding mother. "So," she said, squeezing the word through a tight smile, "this is where you were, Haruka."

"Michiru!" Haruka sat back in his seat and beamed up at her. If he'd had a tail, it would have been wagging. "I was just looking for you!" The woman, Michiru, was unimpressed. "Ah, is that so? Well, it seems we've found each other just in time. We're back on in four minutes." She turned her head, and eyes the colour of envy regarded Midori with all the detachment of an apathetic housecat. "And who's your friend?"

"This is Midori-chan," related Haruka, before Midori had even begun to formulate a response to a question she was quite certain was unanswerable. "Was just keeping her company while she waits for someone."

"Well, let's let her wait in peace, shall we?" suggested Michiru in a tone suggesting it was anything but a suggestion. One white-gloved hand found the velvet crux of Haruka's elbow and hoisted him to his feet. Midori watched, her relief dyed with a slight hue of irrational disappointment, as the blonde was half-led, half-dragged away from her table. "Catch you later, kitten," he called over his shoulder, seemingly unmindful of his companion's ire. "Give my regards to your friend when he arrives!"

With that he was gone, absorbed into the homogenous crowd. Midori's head turned on its axis, charting the return route from the black canvas of the painting to the white pot of the fern.

Sekken was still there, and he was still laughing.

_He's already arrived, _Midori thought despondently.

* * *

"So, what did you think of her?" 

Finished with the clasp of her bowtie, Haruka pulled it loose, dropped it onto the nightstand, and started on the buttons of her white microfibre shirt. "She's definitely up to something," she replied. Pushing the last button through its hole, she let the garment hang open and sat down on the bed. "Couldn't tell you what, though."

"Remind me again why _you_ spoke to her?" Michiru sat at the dressing table near the foot of the bed, watching Haruka through the round, vicarious eye of the mirror. The tiny gold zipper between her shoulder blades remained steadfastly fastened. Haruka peeled off her second sock and looked back at her. "I'm the guy," she explained, waving her hand as if to usher this fact across. "It's easier for me to talk to girls."

She settled back against the headboard, arms crossed behind her head and feet crossed at the end of her long legs, and thought for a moment. "She's trying to keep herself hidden," she began, "although a brown cloak at a cocktail party is about the worst choice of disguise you could make. Clearly not a professional." She uncrossed her feet and recrossed them in the opposite direction. "She was nervous, too. Clearly uncomfortable with me sitting there, could barely get a word out without stuttering. About as conspicuous as you can get. Not what you'd expect from a spy or whatever she thinks she is." She raised her chin to stare thoughtfully at the polished chrome curves of the light fitting above the bed. "I don't think she's our villain, though. Deception doesn't come naturally to her. More than that, if villains were actually that incompetent we'd have much easier lives."

"So the question is," interjected Michiru, "what is she doing here?"

"She was waiting for someone, or looking for someone," replied Haruka. Her eyes dropped to fix on the little gleam of light at the tip of Michiru's zipper. "She kept glancing towards the back of the room, and she admitted as much when I asked her about it."

"The back of the room," emphasised Michiru. "Which brings us to our second person of interest."

"The fat man with the loud laugh," recalled Haruka. "If anyone's the villain, it's him." At the conclusion of their second set, the big man's thunderous applause had galloped over the heads of partygoers too polite to notice or too drunk to care and crashed to an inelegant halt at the stage. "Some people, you can just tell."

"Well, while _you_ were busy flirting with the young lady in the cloak," – Michiru's scathing look lost none of its severity during its journey to the mirror and back across the room to the bed – "_I_ was busy flirting with the young man at the bar." A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "It seems our portly friend is one General Sekken, but beyond that nobody seems to know who he is or what he's up to."

Haruka sat forward, propping herself up with her hands. "You think he's suspicious too?"

Michiru nodded. "I do. Just a feeling."

"Good enough for me." Haruka swung her legs over the side of the bed and placed her bare feet back on the cream carpet. "We should go and pay him a visit. After I've taken a shower."

"Indeed," agreed Michiru. She reached around to grip her zipper between thumb and forefinger, but paused as she continued speaking. "All we need is a reason to speak with him. Your good friend Midori-chan may not wish to operate above suspicion, but I'd personally rather do so for as long as possible."

"Mm," concurred Haruka, watching her partner's hovering hand. "After all, Setsuna's keeping her eye on dear Midori-chan for us." The zip still hadn't moved. "Any idea what that reason might be?"

They looked as one to the door as something rapped lightly against its pine exterior. It was Michiru who stood and padded over to oblige it. Haruka's sole concession to the impending threat of company was to draw her shirt tails across her navy bra like white curtains. Opening the door yielded a bashful busboy who had to look away from Michiru, as if her radiance would literally sear his retinas, before he could hesitantly announce that "One Sekken-san requests the pleasure of your company."

"Well," said Michiru, turning away from him to address Haruka. "Isn't that convenient?"

And then, looking back over her shoulder at the timid, trembling busser, "Would you mind giving me a hand with my zipper?"


End file.
